XLB: A High Performance Layer-7 Load Balancer for Microservices using eBPF-based In-kernel Interposition
Yuejie Wang, Chenchen Shou, Jiaxu Qian, Guyue Liu

TL;DR
XLB introduces an in-kernel, eBPF-based L7 load balancer for microservices that significantly improves throughput and latency by eliminating overheads associated with traditional load balancer architectures.
Contribution
The paper presents a novel in-kernel load balancer architecture using eBPF, providing higher performance and scalability for microservices compared to existing solutions.
Findings
Up to 1.5x higher throughput than Istio and Cilium
60% lower end-to-end latency
Efficient socket layer redirection and nested eBPF maps
Abstract
L7 load balancers are a fundamental building block in microservices as they enable fine-grained traffic distribution. Compared to monolithic applications, microservices demand higher performance and stricter isolation from load balancers. This is due to the increased number of instances, longer service chains, and the necessity for co-location with services on the same host. Traditional sidecar-based load balancers are ill-equipped to meet these demands, often resulting in significant performance degradation. In this work, we present XLB, a novel architecture that reshapes L7 load balancers as in-kernel interposition operating on the socket layer. We leverage eBPF to implement the core load balancing logic in the kernel, and address the connection management and state maintenance challenges through novel socket layer redirection and nested eBPF maps designs. XLB eliminates the extra…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoftware System Performance and Reliability · Cloud Computing and Resource Management · Software-Defined Networks and 5G
